


BARI Dreams

by rnanqo



Category: The Locked Tomb Trilogy | Gideon the Ninth Series - Tamsyn Muir
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon, Alternate Universe - Coffee Shops & Cafés, Denial, F/F, The People's Tomb Fic Jam: Dream, cohort coffeeshop AU, gideon nav reinvents the americano
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-09-25
Updated: 2020-09-25
Packaged: 2021-03-08 03:54:01
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,373
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26639140
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/rnanqo/pseuds/rnanqo
Summary: Harrowhark Nonagesimus' first BARI coffee gives her strange dreams. She returns to the Cohort coffee counter to find out why.
Relationships: Gideon Nav/Harrowhark Nonagesimus
Comments: 18
Kudos: 117





	BARI Dreams

You had not slept well last night. Your duties as a Cohort chaplain were always light, and though your mind was uncharacteristically preoccupied, this day crawled by slower than most. As soon as it hit 1900 hours, you locked your office door and headed straight to Deck 3’s mess hall. Dinner service was finishing up, the last stragglers taking their plates to the disposal windows, Cohort trainees wiping down the empty tables.

But you hadn’t come for dinner. You’d come for answers. You did not spare a glance for the hot food line, nor the cold leafy vegetable buffet; you went straight for the coffee counter.

It was the same server on duty as yesterday, the tall, well-muscled one with the shock of red hair. You stood silently under the cheery ORDER HERE! sign, until she finished up whatever she was scrubbing and turned around and saw you, her face breaking into a grin.

“Hey, it’s the Black Anchorite! What’s going on? I’m just closing up here. I dumped all the brewed coffee already but I could still do you an espresso or something.”

“Actually, I had a question,” you said, trying desperately to summon your chill from whence it fled. Your brain had briefly short-circuited somewhere around _still do you_. “About the BARI.”

This was a question you had been chewing on all day, the question that stalked your passage from cell to briefing room and sat lurking in the corner. Yesterday you’d seen this same coffee adept shake a scoop of BARI into your cup, lean forearms flexing, before pouring in the black coffee. She’d handed it to you with an electric gleam in her eye and your fingers brushed hers as you took the cup . . .

And then you’d had the most wretched dreams. They were so confusing and indistinct you couldn’t even have said what they were about, but you’d woken up trying to lick your pillow, which had never happened before. You did not know what was in the BARI, but it couldn’t be good.

The coffee adept’s eyebrows rose. “A question about the BARI? Sure.”

You cleared your throat. “What, exactly, is it?”

“You were here yesterday, right? Was the coffee okay? I can always remake a drink for you if you don’t like it.”

“It was . . . strong,” you said. “Not bad,” you added hastily, “but I’ve never had BARI before, and I reacted adversely to it.”

The coffee adept nodded along with you. “Sure. Yeah. I mean, it doesn’t have any common allergens in it or anything, but people react to all kinds of stuff. I couldn’t tell you off the top of my head what’s actually in the mix we use. Lemme grab a box so you can check.”

With something that might have been a wink—you’d read about them, but until this unreal moment, you didn’t for a second believe that people _actually winked_ —she disappeared behind a swinging steel door into the back.

You tried to catch your breath; you had forgotten to breathe at some point. There must have been residual BARI in the air. Powerful stuff, if you could react to it like that. No wonder it had given you upsetting dreams.

The door opened again and the coffee adept returned with a white box hugged to her chest. She plopped it on top of the counter, turning it to reveal a stamp: BARI POWDER, JGY2K FORMULA. Below the stamp was a label with nutrition facts and ingredients. A _long_ list of ingredients, in very small type. The coffee adept busied herself wiping down machines and opening and closing cabinets. You squinted at the label.

_Medium chain triglycerides. Cinnamon. Silicon dioxide. Turmeric_ —

Something clanged. You looked over. She had dropped a small metal container and there was green powder all over the floor. “Balls,” she muttered, and bent down to clean it. Her white trousers fit her very well. You looked away.

_Cholecalciferol. Pantothenic acid. Pyridoxine. Thiamin_ —

“Find anything weird in there?”

You looked up. She was grinning. There definitely was something weird somewhere, but it wasn’t in the ingredients list; it was in the pit of your stomach.

“Not yet,” you said, but even to yourself you sounded strangled.

“Hey, we were in the same training platoon, right? Don’t think we ever talked, but I’m Nav. Gideon Nav.”

She gave you a little wave, her hands smeared with green powder. You gave her a curt nod and avoided looking her in the eye. You had come for an answer, and you couldn’t afford to be distracted.

_Methylcobalamin. Methylfolate. Adhyperforin_ —

Your thoughts were slowing down. Making sense of ingredients was like wading through loose grave dirt. You wondered dimly if there could be a carbon monoxide leak nearby, but Nav seemed unaffected. She was moving around behind the counter with far too much energy for someone at the end of their shift, even humming to herself. And, horrifyingly, you were looking at her again. Worse, now she’d caught you. _Worst_ , she smiled, and her eyes were just as golden and warm as yesterday. Your stomach flipped.

“Since you’re here, can I interest you in an experimental drink?” she said. “No BARI, just caffeine.”

She had already begun doing some kind of tamping thing with a complicated little gadget, so you nodded politely and wrenched your focus back to the ingredients.

_Sarcosine_ —

Your brain stalled and gave up completely.

“The BARI gave me strange dreams,” you said in a rush, though you did not know how she could possibly help you with this. “I’m trying to figure out why.”

She gave you a contemplative look that did awful things to your insides. You wanted to her to stop looking at you. You wanted her to keep looking at you. You wanted to flee.

“That’s rough,” she said, dispensing a graceful stream of hot water into a to-go cup. “I used to get stress dreams all the time. BARI helps cut down on those, actually.”

“Not for me,” you said firmly. “I’ve never had those dreams before and it cannot be a coincidence that I had them after drinking BARI for the first time.”

She raised an eyebrow. “Uh-huh.” She pressed a lid onto the cup with long, strong fingers. "Here, try this and tell me how it is. It's just espresso and hot water. I'm calling it a Hot Mess.”

You hated the taste of coffee, but that was why you drank it in the first place. Watery espresso was exactly the kind of quotidian penance that the crime of your existence called for; which was to say, the drink sounded perfect.

She slid you the cup with a smile. Without thinking, you reached for it and—it happened again. Your fingers brushed hers. You looked up, and your gazes locked in one deathless, dizzying moment.

Oh, you were stupid. You were so stupid. You were so, so stupid.

Your heart stuttered. Your face heated up under your paint. You wanted to die.

There was something very wrong with you, and it wasn’t your reaction to BARI. And judging by the curve of her smile, Nav had known that all along.

You seized the cup and backed away and babbled some kind of horrible awkward thank-you. Then you managed to trip over nothing, and a few drops of coffee splattered onto your Cohort whites. As you made an unhinged catastrophe of yourself, Nav raised her hand in farewell. “Hey, come back tomorrow, okay? You gotta let me know how it is!”

Your dreams that night were no less confusing and upsetting. What was worse, now they involved distinct impressions of gold eyes and flexing forearms, as your brain overrode nearly two decades of training and turned traitor. You came awake with a shudder in the early hours of the morning, staring up at the air vent above your cot, feeling like you might explode with the sheer pathetic force of your wanting. In the sickly glow of your alarm clock, you had to acknowledge that your affliction had nothing to do with the BARI at all. No. You, Harrowhark Nonagesimus, Reverend Daughter of the House of the Ninth and Black Anchorite of the Cohort, best necromancer of your generation, had a _crush_.


End file.
